NEWS RELEASE:STARDUST NAME COUNT PASSES 500,000 MARK
Joint campaign between National Space Society and NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory is halfway to million name goal

(Washington, DC) -- July 2 -- The National Space Society (NSS)
announced today that the 500,000 mark has been surpassed in an
online campaign to collect one million names to be embedded onto a
microchip on board the NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
Stardust spacecraft. The "Make an IMPACT" campaign with its million
name goal was announced as a joint effort between the NSS, NASA and
JPL in May with the release of Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks
Pictures' "Deep Impact." The campaign is being conducted in
cooperation with JPL's "Send Your Name to a Comet" effort.

"It was our decision, along with Paramount and DreamWorks, to
see if we could help JPL hit that million mark and I'd say we're
well on our way," said NSS Director of Communications Karen Rugg.
"By gathering names online and at every NSS activity, we've been
contributing approximately 5,000 names per day. And we're hearing
some great stories -- people entering the names of their family
members (and planning to tell them at Christmas), their swim teams,
their baseball teams, their bowling leagues, their graduating
classes, their newborn children, their book clubs. All NSS members
are on the chip, as well as the cast of 'Deep Impact'".

Names can be submitted through the NSS website until mid-August
at <http://www.nss.org/impact>.
Those submitting their names are granting permission for the
Stardust project and its partners to use the names in possible
future exhibits and/or publications.

Stardust is being prepared for launch by NASA and the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory to intercept Comet Wild-2, collect comet dust
particles and deliver them back to Earth in January 2006, according
to mission plans. Names from the campaign will be electronically
etched onto a fingernail-size silicon chip. Once inscribed, the
names can be read only with the aid of an electron microscope.

The National Space Society, founded in 1974, is an independent,
nonprofit space advocacy organization headquartered in Washington,
DC. Its 23,000 members and 90 chapters around the world actively
promote a spacefaring civilization. Information on NSS and space
exploration is available at http://www.nss.org/.